What Colin Kaepernick wants will take more than cosmetic changes

Colin Kaepernick could cut his hair, shave his beard and wear three-piece suits every day of the week and he’d still be radioactive to NFL owners.

Because the quarterback’s shunning isn’t about how he looks or what he wears. It’s not even about what he does when the national anthem is played, really. It’s about politics. Specifically, his own and his refusal to play by those of others.

That’s really what Michael Vick was getting at when he suggested that Kaepernick could help himself by getting a haircut.

“Just go clean cut. Why not?” Vick asked during an appearance Monday on FS1’s Speak for Yourself. “You’re already dealing with a lot of controversy surrounding this issue. What he needs to do is just try to be presentable.”

Replace the word “presentable” with “passive” or “palatable” and we’re getting somewhere.

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Vick served almost two years in prison for running a dogfighting ring. During the investigation, he acknowledged killing some of the dogs himself. If anyone ever needed an image makeover, it was Vick.

But Kaepernick has never done anything heinous or even criminal. His great sin wasn’t even disrespecting the anthem, the flag, the military or any of the other excuses that have been used over the last year to negate his message.

Rather, it was his audacity in calling out police brutality in communities of color and the economic system that’s at the root of it that is deemed unforgivable.

Other athletes have walked a finer line, condemning systemic racism while also calling for “personal responsibility” when it comes to black-on-black crime. Not Kaepernick. The former San Francisco 49ers quarterback pointed the finger squarely at everyone who has benefited from the system and done little more than watch as people of color are kept on the outside looking in. 

“He attacked capitalism and the system that was created with systemic racism,” said Louis Moore, a history professor at Grand Valley State in Michigan and author of We Will Win the Day: The Civil Rights Movement, the Black Athlete and the Quest for Equality.

“His belief is, you solve this problem, the violence is going to take care of itself,” Moore said. “I think that’s what made people uncomfortable. It’s never acknowledged why racism and capitalism are intertwined.”

That’s what makes Vick’s criticism so troubling.

By suggesting that Kaepernick could get back in the NFL’s good graces with a haircut and a mea culpa, as he once did, Vick seemed to equate advocating for social justice with the brutal murder of dogs. It is not. That NFL owners and some of their fans are so bothered by Kaepernick’s activism that he remains without a job while lesser quarterbacks have been snapped up says more about them than it does him.

Like that Kaepernick's on to something.

But Vick’s comments also perpetuated the stereotypes that people of color are better seen and not heard, and that athletes should keep their mouths shut because of the many doors that sports have opened. 

“Vick is playing in the respectability politics. 'You have to act a certain way to get somewhere,'” Moore said. “What Vick said is nothing new. It’s just disappointing because it’s 2017, and that shouldn’t be the case."

“Vick does a lot of damage to young black people when he says you only get something when you shut up and play,” Moore added.

It’s no different than the backlash Muhammad Ali and even Jackie Robinson got back in their day. Oh, we’ve forgotten all that nastiness now, choosing to focus instead on their roles as stoic barrier breaker (Robinson) and beloved humanitarian (Ali).

But they were once considered rabble rousers, too. And criticized mightily for it.

Kaepernick did not answer Vick’s criticisms directly, instead posting the definition of Stockholm syndrome on Twitter and Instagram.

“… the victim sees the smallest act of decent behavior as an extracted event which makes them see their captors as essentially good,” the definition reads, in part. “This way, they leave aside all the negative behavioral distinctions of their captors and focus on the positive ones.”

In other words, the system has now conditioned Vick to put the onus for change on Kaepernick.

But it’s not Kaepernick who needs to change. And it’s going to take a lot more than a haircut to make it happen.

Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on Twitter @nrarmour. 

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